This is the blog of Eco-Vista | Brent Stephenson, a wildlife photographer, guide, and birder based near Napier, New Zealand. His wildlife, landscape, and people images can be discovered at his portfolio website.

Wednesday, 2 November 2011

It was all going so well

So we were up, yet another bakery stop, and then on the road
with a light drizzle (the weather that is).
We headed across the Napier-Taupo highway with pie crumbs flying, and
contented snores starting to erupt, when I spied what looked like a duck shaped
object on a rock as we went over a bridge.
Managing to do a u-turn a few kilometres down the road, we came back to
the bridge and yes there it was, a blue duck sitting on a rock just downstream
of the bridge. We parked on the side of
the road, being a little distracted by a shining bronze cuckoo calling nearby
and getting a quick view of it, before heading onto the bridge and getting
quick views of the bird as it took to the water and headed downstream. Nice!
In the hundreds of trips along this road this is the first time I’ve
seen a blue duck here, although a small population does exist in the area.

We then headed on for Boundary Stream and did one of the
walks getting good views of the usual forest birds including rifleman, tomtit,
robin, whitehead, and grey warbler. A
quiet falcon call had me going as I finished a pit-stop at the bathroom, but never
called again. We headed off along the
trail and first heard a falcon pair making a few noises, and then saw the male
circle out and around and then over us, giving really nice views before heading
off.

On the way back we kept an ear out for kokako, but not much
there, but with eyes to the ground managed to find several small colonies of
spider orchids in flower. Great little
things and possibly at least two different species.

Things were going oh so well! We headed down to Napier, where the weather
was dry and warm, and decided to see if we could find some bittern. The first stop had a lot of potential, until
we realised there was somebody working on the tree plantings, and there was
certainly no bittern to be seen. There
were a few ducks and Royal spoonbill as a consolation prize though! So we headed on to a couple of other local
spots looking for bittern and perhaps a chance at the little egret...ha! Luck seemed to have run out with not a sniff
of a brown streaky thing or a small white thing! Things couldn’t get any worse...until we got
to the Te Aute rookery (which had been active a few weeks before) to find empty
nests where there had obviously been a spot of rook ‘control’ recently. Not a one!
The words ‘I can smell victory’ kept resonating in my head for the rest
of the afternoon! At least until we got
to Anderson Park and found the three plumed whistling ducks happily lined up on
the pond edge...thank goodness!

So we called past Westshore, grabbed a black-fronted
dotterel on the trot and then headed for Turangi, where it started to rain...